


this is all thor's fault

by fourshoesfrank



Category: Deadpool (Movieverse), Deadpool - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Bonding, Childhood Trauma, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Past Child Abuse, Torture Flashbacks, Trauma, also theyre both neurodivergent and you will pry that from me cold dead shriveled hands, i wanted to see these two interact more in the movie, i wrote this at like two am but i edited it during the day so it should be coherent, neena is a Mom, theres no thor bashing lmao i dont make fun of tops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-05
Updated: 2018-07-05
Packaged: 2019-06-05 21:43:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15180017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fourshoesfrank/pseuds/fourshoesfrank
Summary: Russell and Neena understand each other.





	this is all thor's fault

     Russell went to sleep around 9:30 (yeah yeah, boring, who goes to bed that early?), after telling Ellie and Yukio goodnight and nodding sleepily to Colossus’s pre-bed lecture on letting sleep be a healing and restorative time for his body and mind. As soon as the metal man closed his door, the kid was out like a light.

     It hadn’t been storming at 9:30.

     It sure as hell was storming at 1:26, when Russell woke up crying and unsure whether he was in the X-mansion or the ~~rehabilitation house~~ glorified torture center. He was still on the edge of dreaming and wakefulness, still seeing the dream-Headmaster push him into that hateful metal chair and hearing the crackle of electricity with his dream-ears.

     Thunder boomed outside and it reminded Russell that yes, he was in the X-mansion. The mansion was safe. A tear slipped down his cheek as another snatch of the dream came back.

      _He‘s running in the park with his mum and his mama, little Russy, only five years old, running on only slightly unsteady legs toward the swings. He’s shrieking in delight at the feeling of his mama hoisting him into the swing. Now she’s telling him to hold on tight, Russy, so he does, he clenches the chain tight with his small child fists that don’t yet hold fire and zooms up._

_He can hear his mum saying to Mama don’t push him too high, babe, he might fall and his mama says back it’s okay, I’ll catch him. Russell kicks his legs back and forth as he swoops through the air, propelled by the strength of his mama._

_A raindrop lands smack on the tip of his nose. And then another lands on his chubby knee as he kicks his leg out again because he’s so happy. And then there are millions and bazillions of them landing everywhere, and Mama plucks him out of the swing and the three of them begin the mad dash for the car. Russell is squeezing his eyes shut so the water won’t get in them, so he can’t see anything, but he hears thunder booming and it sounds close._

_Now Mum’s holding him; they must be at the car because Mama always drives in bad weather. He flicks his eyes open just for a teensy second and sees a big white light hit a nearby tree, and he’s screaming now. He’s screaming because that’s lightingering, and that’s dangerous and it can kill people and it was right there!_

     Russell wiped his eyes and turned over in bed, determined to go back to sleep. This was the X-mansion, and it was safe. He could sleep soundly for the first time in years.

     A flash of lightning illuminated his room, followed by a deafening thunderclap.

     He sighed. There was no fooling himself tonight. It would take some heavy drugs to put him to sleep again, and even then it would be a light sleep. He might as well stay awake and wait for the storm to be over.

    There was no point in staying awake if you didn’t have something to do, so Russell shoved his feet into the crocs Wade had bought for him last week and made his way downstairs, where there was bound to be at least one person getting a midnight snack and watching the Late Late Show. Maybe Yukio was on the couch playing games on her laptop. Russell would even settle for Colossus’s dumb Russian game shows, but he doubted the guy ever stayed up past 10 pm. And currently it was 1:33. A little less than six hours before Russell had to be awake.

     The kitchen was empty. He knew there was nothing good in the fridge because he helped Ellie raid it yesterday, so he checked the living room. Sitting on the coffee table was the shiny headphones-thingy that Wade had broken before the mission to get Russell. On the rug in front of the piano, Cable had forgotten to pick up an iPad 2 User’s Guide, which lay open to a page about the Music app. And in a chair near the door to the porch...

    Neena was curled up wearing cheetah print pajamas and staring down at the floor. She didn’t look up when Russell walked into the room. He glanced at her again. She didn’t look like she was just seeing the floor. Maybe she was astral projecting, he knew that some people could do that. Neena didn’t seem like the kind of person who did that, though.

     All this heavy silence was inviting Russell’s dream to come back, so he asked, “You wanna see what’s on TV?”

     She shuddered in the chair like he’d given her an electric shock (no, don’t think about electricity). Slowly, her eyes drifted up from the carpet and looked at him. She looked like she’d just woken up.

     “You can’t sleep either?”

    “No.” Russell realized that he probably looked like a wreck, he knew his eyes were swollen and probably red and his hair was still messed up from tossing and turning. He glanced at Neena’s hair and saw that it was pretty much in the same state as his, and her eyes were in bad shape too.

     She sighed heavily. “They used the shocks on you, too?”

     “Yeah,” he said softly. He looked down at Cable’s book, swaying from side to side in the quiet, dark room while he waited for something to happen.

     Neena untucked her cheetah-clad legs from beneath her and stood up. “Come here,” she said softly, tugging on his shoulder as she walked to the couch. “We’ll watch some of that cartoon Wade likes.”

     Russell knew that was Naruto. He sat down next to his friend and waited for her to find it on Netflix. The mansion had one account per 'friend group' to save money, and the X-Force account was a goddamn mess. There was anime and porn (Wade, of course), crime documentaries (Ellie), kids’ shows (Cable, catching up on what his daughter would have had), teen dramas and coming-of-age movies (Yukio), musicals (Russell himself, to most people's surprise), and the old films that Neena liked to make fun of.

     Russell didn’t understand the plot of Naruto, but he didn’t really care about it either. He was drifting off despite the thunder and lightning outside when something on the show flashed and crackled with electricity. He froze as the sensation of being shocked in the neck flooded over him for the second time that night, bringing back even more bad memories this time. Neena must’ve felt him tense up beside her, because the next thing he was aware of was that her arms were wrapped around him and he was crying against the cheetah print on her shoulder.

     He felt her patting him on the back and heard her saying, “It’s okay it’s okay you’re safe here it’s just a storm you’re okay it’s okay,” over and over. “Hey,” she said gently when he lifted his head, “it’s alright. I got you.” Russell felt more tears coming to his eyes when he nodded shakily in response. She squeezed him tight when he laid his head back down on her chest. At least he wasn’t crying anymore.

     “You wanna talk about it? Survivor to survivor?” Neena asked after a bit. Her voice was shaky too, and for some reason that was what prompted Russell to agree. Here was someone who knew exactly how he felt, and she seemed to be pretty mentally healthy so why not tell her.

     “I was taken there when I was six,” he said. “My parents realized I was a mutant when I lit the candles on my birthday cake with my fingers. They freaked out and called Essex.” The name is the hardest part to say. “The Headmaster told my parents they could help control me. And when I wasn’t running around with thousand degree fingers, I’d be sent right back home.”

     Neena nodded. “Sounds kinda like what happened to me. I was on a school trip to a science museum. One of the rooms had a psionic energy scanner. When the teacher realized that I was pinging the hell out of it, she told my dad and he sent me to that place.” She didn’t even try to name it. “I was eight.”

     “Was that nurse with the big forehead there when you were?” He means Daniel, but he doesn’t want to say his name.

     “The Bill Skarsgård knockoff? Yeah, he tried to drown me in a bathtub once.” Russell didn’t have any good memories of the man either.

     Yet another bright flash lit up the room. Neena jolted upright and almost fell off the couch; Russell froze again as his mind turned to the shock machine once more. The scars on his neck twinged in response to his thoughts. He looked at Neena’s neck and noticed that she didn’t have any scars there.

     “Where’d they shock you?” It didn’t even register that that might be rude until after he said it, but Russell didn’t care. She wasn’t going to leave just because he was rude. Probably.

     “Right here,” she said, pointing to a pair of scars just below her hairline on the back of her neck. “They wanted to be discreet, I guess.” She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “They clearly didn’t care about that by the time you came along.” For some reason, that made him tear up again. A minute later, Neena was crying with him.

     They were clutching each other for dear life while they both bawled their eyes out with Naruto still playing in the background, wasn’t this a pretty picture. Russell wiped his eyes and felt Neena lift her hands to do the same. The two of them sat back on the couch, listening to the rain pound the mansion's roof and the ground outside. They leaned on each other, each drawing strength from the fact that they were not facing the storm and the memories alone.

     This was the first time Russell had been shown any kind of sympathy for the complete and utter terror that lightning struck in him. Every time that harsh white light flickered outside, every time the clouds rumbled their displeasure at the electricity escaping their bodies and rushing toward the ground, Russell squeezed Neena’s hand. Through that simple squeeze, he grounded himself, kept his mind in the here and now instead of replaying nightmares on a constant hellish loop that refreshed with each boom and flash.

     “This is all Thor’s fault,” Neena mumbled to the room. “He’s probably up there with his dick in someone’s ass and he’s making it storm so he can have romantic thunder sex.” Russell laughed.

     “God damn it, Thor.”

**Author's Note:**

> leave me some feedback you forgetful hobgoblins


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